‘If we were together now, I would convince you. I would, which is why these calls aren’t enough,’ he said. ‘We need to see each other, we need to be in the same place. Where are you?’
‘I won’t tell.’ She felt powerful. Distance gave her power. A sense of invincibility. ‘Besides, you don’t have a visa.’
‘Who says I don’t have a visa! I have a five-year visa that I can use multiple times.’
‘Bluffing.’ She was safe. What was he going to do? Drop everything and hop on a plane. No one in their right mind would do that. She could relax.
‘I remember your clothes.’
‘Oh yes, I remember your clothes too.’
They list:
A red T-shirt, the sleeves just a little too short. They showed off his biceps. On purpose? Not on purpose?
The denim jacket she wore almost continuously in second year.
The headscarf with silver threads that shed all over the place. Cheap.
The sunglasses he forgot at the café and when they went back to get them, they were not on the table and the waiter who had served them denied that they had left anything behind. Do sunglasses count as clothes?
The striped top that hung well below her lab coat and looked dowdy.
His lab coat – the one that was incredibly white, so bluish white that it made her sing the lyrics of the Ariel ad.
His tennis top with the lopsided collar. It always curled, it could never fall flat.
Her green dress, the one she wore when he was ill and she came to his house to give him the notes he’d missed. Because she sat in the kitchen watching his mother cook, the dress afterwards smelt of garlic and coriander.
The jumper that ended up smudged with tears, mascara and snot.
He insisted that it was always harder for those who stayed behind. He was the one forced to move in the same physical space, circling the spot newly vacant, now abandoned, gnawing on the absence. While she had forged ahead into a better world, out of reach, learning, adjusting, improving – she had no time to think of him and he could think of nothing else but her.
She accused him of exaggerating. She only half believed these professions of misery. They had been young, after all, resilient and immature. Instead she took his reproach as an attempt to draw her close, perhaps even win her back. Or else it was part of the flirting game; it certainly was pleasurable.
I’m waiting for you, she texted. It would be like you to surprise me by just appearing. No warnings given. No, Salma, I am arriving on such-and-such a flight. Or, Salma, pick me up from the airport. She laughed at the thought of seeing him again. The comedy of it. Perhaps she would not fancy him at all and instead see him as another client. Someone she would caution not to sit too much, not to lift things too heavy. Why shatter the illusion and spoil the gentle flow of nostalgia?
On and on, the back and forth of it. Every time, it became less guarded; every time, she took more risks. A selfie. A photo of her new running shoes. He sent photos of his clinic – he was showing off. He sent a voice message she could listen to time and again. Speaking to him as she was lying down was different than sitting or standing up. When they were both lying down, when they knew they were both lying down . . . Now that it started, it went on, even when Moni noticed that she was sneaking off to send voice messages, even when Iman noticed her excitement every time her phone flashed with the arrival of a new text. The guilt, if there had been any at the beginning, was trampled by repetition. Any awkwardness was ironed out. She became bolder in what she said. What she said she wanted. In theory of course, always in theory.
They exchanged secrets. He could trust her because she was far removed from his social circle. She did not know the people he rubbed against each day, the movers and shakers in his life. He told her of an incident he was ashamed of, an incident in which he had broken the law. He had not spoken to anyone about this. A week after he first opened his clinic, late one night after all the patients and receptionist had gone, two men came in. You will accompany us, they said. We are state security, they said. He went with them in their car. They blindfolded and handcuffed him but were extremely polite. The drive went on for miles. When the car stopped, and they uncovered his eyes, he saw with the first light of dawn that they had arrived at a villa in the middle of the desert. It had a wide garden and a spacious drive. There was a sprinkler in the garden. Inside, the furniture was new and expensive. He was led up the stairs to a bedroom with the television on at full blast, a singing competition. A woman in a nightdress was on the bed, tied up, obviously bruised, obviously pregnant. But he had not been brought here to tend to her wounds. You will bring the contents of her womb down, the men said.
When he said no, they held a gun to his head. They said, a shame you would die in such squalid conditions, in a bedroom in the arms of a whore. That’s the image your father and mother would carry for the rest of their lives. He had trained as a surgeon, not a gynaecologist, he had never performed an abortion before. Not even on a willing mother. This one fought him with all her strength. And the baby, a girl, was big enough to breathe, at least for a few minutes.
He said that, for months and years, he lived in fear. In fear that the woman would surface and report him, in fear that the men would show up, in the fear that such a dirty secret would pop up out of nowhere and ruin his life. Even now, he said, after all this time passed, I still walk against the wall, with my head down. ‘You’re fortunate, Salma,’ he said. ‘You are more fortunate than you think.’
The confession drew her closer to him. The catch in his voice, the fear he invoked. She understood what he had gone through, at least understood the compulsion and the shame. He would never be the same again and no one would guess why. Later, when the men drove him back to his clinic, still polite as ever, he could not believe what had happened. A slice out of his life. A bad dream. Count yourself lucky. Among the disappeared and the imprisoned for years, his tragedy wasn’t such a tragedy, his loss minute.
‘They put a gun to your head,’ Salma said. ‘There was nothing you could do. You were forced into it.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s what I tell myself.’
‘Were they really state security?’
‘I don’t know. How can I ever be sure? Gangsters, mafia. I don’t want anything to do with them.’
‘Why didn’t they just get a corrupt doctor and pay him?’
‘I thought of that too. I can’t figure it out.’
The suppositions and making sense were part of the pleasure of their phone calls. She had not spoken like that in years. Every culture has its own way of reasoning. With him, she was untangling things the way she had done long ago. The same probes, the same logic. This is a function of that, this is correlated to this, correlation is not causation and, of course, there is the law of diminishing returns.
When it became her turn to confess, the mood lightened between them. She said that she had already told him about not being a physiotherapist. ‘That can’t be everything,’ he said, which made her laugh. He was right, but it was Iman who was her confidante, Iman was the one with whom she shared her secrets. She could not bring herself to tell him about the shop assistant who sold her the gloves. He was handsome and young, most likely a student, and she had felt an attraction to him that was so strong that it was almost tangible; every second in his company loaded, the whole interaction heaving. It was all over the top and in telling the story to Iman, she had embellished the details, added more spice, to the extent that Iman insisted that she must see him for herself. The next day they went together to the department store and while Salma stayed away, Iman went over to the counter and pretended to be interested in gloves. Salma should have seen it coming. The attendant was warmer towards Iman than he had been to her yesterday. Even though Iman did not buy a pair of gloves, he gave her more attention and showed her more patience. Afterwards, Salma and Iman had coffee and
cake and laughed about him. Iman said that he was too rough-looking for her taste. She said that the ladies’ accessories section of this reputable department store could not camouflage the essential manual labourer in him. And they laughed even more.
The second crush/attraction/disloyalty to her husband – she could not decide on how to name it except that it was a secret – involved a client and was less light-hearted than the shop assistant. The dull, small, grey cubicle in which she worked lit up in crimson, warming her until she was flushing, the partitions narrowing until she felt the need to escape. It was a struggle not to drop the bottle of oil, an effort to keep her voice from rising a pitch. The second time he scheduled a session, he spoke to her in a way that made her realise that her hijab, which she had always depended on for protection, had become useless. It was flimsy and hypocritical. The fire was closer than ever. One word, one step, one stumble. The third time he scheduled an appointment, she called in sick. The fourth time he scheduled an appointment, she made sure she had the day off. The fifth time he scheduled an appointment, she assigned him instead to one of her colleagues who owed her a favour. He asked after you, he asked after you, she would hear and enjoy hearing. But she was sensible enough to keep away from the temptation. To save her soul, to save her marriage, to save her sanity. Keeping away was the right thing to do.
‘Where are you, Salma?’ Amir asked.
‘Far away.’
‘Tell me.’
‘No.’
‘Tell me.’
‘No.’
He threatened he would find her, one way or the other. This week or the next. After the holiday, she would return to find him in her city. He knew the name of the city where she lived.
‘A big city,’ she laughed. ‘And you don’t know my exact address.’
‘There are two ways to get information,’ he said. A bribe or a threat. He elaborated on how he would bribe her. She laughed and laughed. And the threats?
It was Moni who noticed the smell. Fastidious, squeaky-clean Moni having to share a room with Salma’s running gear, the sweat-stained tops and soaking sports bra; the training trousers streaked with grass and whatever else. She wrinkled her nose and walked around the room, sniffing. ‘Can you smell that, Salma? What is it?’
Salma was fiddling with her hair in front of the mirror. She reckoned it had grown thicker since they’d arrived. ‘What kind of smell?’
‘A nasty smell. Foul.’
‘I can’t smell anything.’ Under a harsh light, the top front of her hair exposed glimpses of her scalp, but not as much. She had stopped parting it in the middle, an unflattering look. The past was where her luxuriant hair grew, in another country. ‘Why do you care about your hair, when it’s always covered?’ one of her colleagues had asked when Salma moaned about the price of hair-thickening products. Moni or Iman would never ask such a question. They knew that their headscarves were as important and unimportant as a bra or a pair of sandals. Salma cared about her thinning hair. She just did. What she didn’t care about was the smell in the room, if there was really a smell. It must be Moni’s imagination.
Moni stalked the room, sniffing. She picked up objects and held them up for inspection. In the mirror, Salma watched her with amusement.
‘It’s your phone!’ Moni pointed at it, lying on the side table near Salma’s bed. ‘The smell is coming from your phone,’ she said with triumph.
Salma turned around in disbelief. Suddenly possessive, she sprang across the room and picked up her maligned phone. Now in her hand, it felt valuable and irreplaceable, barely a few days old. ‘Phones don’t smell,’ she murmured, bringing it up to her nose. She barely sniffed it before wiping it on her sleeves.
Moni shrieked. ‘Don’t do that! Disinfect it or at least find out what’s on it.’
‘There is nothing on it,’ said Salma. ‘I had it on the grass earlier on. I remember chucking it in my shoes at some point.’
‘I see. So, you then hold it up to your cheek and your ear.’ Moni was astounded. ‘I would be careful if I were you. All the germs you might pick up.’
Iman was lying on the floor of the forest. When she closed her eyes, she heard what she didn’t want to hear – the distant sound of shelling. The sounds of nature should be louder than those of humans and their weapons. Early in the morning, she had sneaked off and gone on an adventure. She had taken the ferry and then the bus to the nearest town, walked into a hair salon and demanded a bob like that of Lady Evelyn. So much of her black hair had fallen on the ground. And how had she afforded all this? By stretching her hand into Moni’s purse. Given Moni’s carelessness with cash, she would never notice.
The crescendo of the forest suddenly in her ears. She turned and saw the trees blocking out the sun. A chill seized her body. She sat up and gathered her cape closer, over her hair and shoulders. Today’s costume was that of Padmé Amidala. Iman had ached and almost begged the cupboard for a tweed skirt or jodhpurs, for a hunting suit fit for the Highlands, but that was not what she got. She stood up and dusted off the leaves that clung to her tunic. She shook the cape out.
A movement caught her eyes. A sniper in a tree. She leapt and struck him down with her lightsabre. It was imperative that she protected the forest and everyone in it. They needed her. And this sniper had been a scout. There would be others following him, the bulk of the enemy force. She must be alert. She was strong now and moving. She could jump up and leap forward, swing the heavy lightsabre this way and that. It thrilled her, this strength. Knowing too that it was temporary, that it went as easily as it came, and she had little control of it. Ever since the dog had knocked her down and the earth had hugged her, she had experienced this duality. It was almost as if she had to be weakened to gain strength, she had to simulate dying to throb full of life. The dark energy was there in the middle of the earth, under the surface, coming from molten rocks, carried in smoke. She who had always been helpless knew it was invaluable. Her life would never be the same again. Today she was Padmé, queen warrior, mother of twins. With the cape around her head and shoulders, the weapon in her hand, she was able to fight.
The forest witnessed a lightsabre dance. Here were her attendants, a female force, the fiercest in the galaxy. Together they practised their moves and she was the leader. They matched her steps and copied her manoeuvres. There was no need for words, her costume spoke for her. The Hoopoe watched and hovered as if he was the director of this scene. Enemies too were part of the drill. They loomed through the trees, monstrous shapes with grunts and clubs, with brutish strength but limited intelligence, masterminded by a force of supreme evil. Iman and her soldiers could defeat them all, one by one. She was not even frightened. In no time at all, she was done, alert and breathing heavily in case there were other challenges yet to come. When she was sure of her victory, she put her lightsabre away.
It was getting late. The sky was pretending to go dark. It would never completely darken, but still, a sunset was a sunset and it was time for Iman to head back to the cottage. Salma and Moni would wonder where she’d been. Ever since the episode with the dog, they had been extra solicitous, or at least Salma had been. All Moni did was stop asking favours or chores from Iman.
She heard them arguing as soon as she walked into the cottage. As soon as Salma saw Iman, she shouted, ‘What happened to your hair?’ As soon as Moni saw Iman she said, ‘Doesn’t Salma’s phone stink?’
Coming in from the fresh air, Iman caught the sour, uric smell. ‘That can’t be coming from her phone!’
‘There,’ said Salma to Moni. ‘This has nothing to do with my phone.’ She turned away, ‘Iman, who cut your hair for you? Is that why you’ve been gone so long?’
Moni did not allow herself to get distracted. ‘If it’s not your phone, then what is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Salma. ‘I can’t smell anything. If you two can smell something, then look for it yourselves.
Don’t accuse my phone. Phones are phones. They don’t stink. Besides, it’s practically brand new.’
‘Give it to me,’ said Iman.
Salma handed her the phone. Instead of smelling it, Iman went over to the dressing table, picked up Moni’s Obsession and sprayed it all over the phone’s surface. Picking up a tissue, she wiped away the excess liquid. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘All sorted.’
Moni winced at the use of her perfume as camouflage. Now the bad smell was a mix. Whatever it was, urine or worse, drenched in an overdose of Obsession. From now on Moni would never feel the same again about her favourite scent. She would not be able to smell Obsession without smelling what it had tried valiantly to obscure. The audacity of Iman! She could have at least asked her permission.
Iman was pleased with herself. She had resolved the issue and stopped the other two from arguing. She congratulated herself on not being passive, on doing something for a change. There will be a new Iman when we leave the loch, she mused as she walked upstairs to her room. Someone who is stronger, who knows what she wants. She still had to attain that last bit. To know what she wanted. It used to be a baby, that was all she ever wanted, but she could want other things, even though she was not yet sure what exactly. Choosing had never been easy for her. A skill she had not practised because, in a world of little or no choices, it had not been necessary. No more. She was in Britain now and there were choices. More choices than watching daytime TV or children’s movies. She could do this or that, be this or that. To know, to set herself on the right track, to strive, to achieve. One step at a time.
Salma grabbed her phone and stormed out of the cottage. She almost collided with Mullin who was riding a bicycle. He lost his balance and had to stop. ‘Whore,’ he muttered under his breath. Salma did not stop walking. She could not believe that he had just said that. Impossible. She must have heard wrong. He must have said, ‘Whoa!’ That’s what he said, because she nearly knocked him off his bicycle. She wasn’t looking where she was going. The next conversation with Amir would be laced with Moni’s perfume and, by extension, Moni’s disapproval. She did not need this reminder. She did not need pricks on her conscience. It was not that she didn’t feel any guilt at all talking to him, it was that the other things she felt were far stronger.
Bird Summons Page 14